Originally posted here by chizra
Hi,

Since we do happen to live in the same country, I would suggest you to buy a mid-range PCI-E card after you upgrade/have compatible motherboard, CPU etc..since you wish for a good gaming experience.

I would be telling you about the card and you may develop a system around it.

The card i bought and do vouch for happens to be the Leadtek WInfast PX GT 6600 TDH

You may visit the manufacturer site here
http://www.leadtek.com/3d_graphic/wi...0_gttdh_1.html

Here would find pictures of two version, i am talking about the 128 mb version.

Be advised that this is a company overclocked model and you would require a good, airy cabinet and also some external cooler or else you might end frying the hell out of it (it happened with my card..now i am wiser)

I bought it at around Rs. 11000 and bundles 2 full games with it in DVD format.

Considering our sub-continent's extreme heat conditions, would advise that you get a good cabinet/computer case. I purchased mine from www.theitdepot.com

These guys operate out of chennai and have a decent service, I got the box delivered in two days! (thanks to TNT)

I propose a work station/server type box like the Antec Performance TX 1050B (i own it!)

you may find more about it here Antec Performance TX 1050B

Antec makes good, not so flashy cases. There are good cases available abroad, but they would cost a bomb.


This particular supports two front fans so i bought two 80 mm fans seperately

I'd chosen Antec 80mm SmartCool Fan you can see details here http://theitdepot.com/products.asp?prod=10587

they are quiter, thermally controlled (lower fan speed when low activity=saving of much valuable electricity) but a bit higher priced.

Last but not the least i bought a seperate fan cooler for the Card to be sure i didnt overheat and destroy it again you can find it here http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=75060

I didnt find it on the ITdepot website, but you may check with them on phone.

One more good point about this particular cabinet is that it comes pre-loaded with a dual thermally controlled fans antec power supplu unit (550 watts) (it otherwise, seperately costs Rs. 6929), combine it with the cabinet and the whole bundle costs you Rs. 8686 only...thats a good bargain..

Trust me, your 220 volt/watt (whatever) archaic power supply on those teeny weeny cabinets
that assemblers would try to sell you may actually harm the card with the not so efficient and sometimes very volatile power supplies here.


The whole exercise may set you back by Almost Rs. 30K, but it every bit money well spend.

Thats almost tripling your mentioned budget but this is the minimum you need to spend for an average gaming experience (considering today's game requirments of games like FEAR, HL2, Doom 3 & FarCry.

you may find the card review here www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=3&id=1658

and here http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...600gt-pcx.html

Buy the from a very reputed and a known reseller, since incase there is any problem with the card, he would help you have it quickly replaced (in my case it took 15 days) under warranty

One last piece pf advise, Leadtek is lazy when it comes to updating drivers, so i do the updates using nvidia foreware drivers and they work fine!

Guys from other countries, please note that we may not have too many bigger and better
brands available and the specifications and models mentioned may be outdated by your standards. However these are the products available here.The resellers may or may be too keen on serving the warranty hence the advise.

I did a lot of reading, r&d and lots of tele-calling before i finally ended up with this rig and i hope my man hours spend just mining info and gathering reseller info would help you.

Also, invite your opinion on the rig.

Codenamevirus, i am assuming you have either have a well paying job or a generous father for these ventures...

Cheers and Happy Gaming.

Do keep me posted what did you finally got!

1 USD=Rs. 46.90 approx.
Damn there is hope for new membership afterall!

Good post, good advice, good for you chizra!!!!